General thoughts on how to best proceed with removing 8 6tb drives from large array

[FrozenGamer]

Here is my array (attached screenshot) - very large and kind of slow on parity checks etc. -

I have been lazy and just added drives instead of pulling a 6 and replacing it with a 10/12/etc.

I recently purchased 5 14tb drives (seagate to shuck) and i have 1 12tb set aside as a spare for current 12tb max.

In the end i would like 2 parity (14tb) 2 14tb as data drives, and the 2 parity plus the existing 12tb spare would be added.

So there are 8 6tb drives to removed and 2 14tb drives plus the 3 12tbs to be introduced.  48tb from the 6's with 64tb from the 12s and 14s. 

What is the best plan of attack to accomplish this? Include using a new temporary unraid server in options/ideas as well if that is a good idea?

 

I am following this thread as an example.  

 

[codefaux]

I'll start by saying, there may be better routes, but this at least is what I would do, generally speaking -- obviously you'll have to make some tweaks depending on array fill, and so forth.

 

1- Make sure everything is healthy, SMART-wise

2- Remove Parity. I know, yikes, but it makes the rest faster.

3- Do whatever it takes to empty the drives you're removing, potentially installing new drives and using them to offload data from the old drives. The Unbalance plugin may help here.

4- Remove the drives, install all the new drives

5- Configure parity/disks/cache as if it were a new array configuration.

 

Unraid should not format anything it can already mount, and (to my knowledge) does not care about the specific ordering of disks, so long as Parity and Cache remain in the exact right place. Setting up a "new" array with "old" disks and factory-clean disks will mean it will format the factory disks, and a Parity Sync will also need to be run.

 

By doing all of the swapping with Parity disabled, you won't have to wait for disk clearing, but you are at risk of data loss if something unexpected happens. For the volume of swaps you would need to do with Parity enabled, I cannot imagine it being a pleasant experience, and it could literally take days.

 

 

Given the implications of saying "disable your safety net" I'm going to recommend not proceeding until there's a consensus, regardless of whose it is.

 

 

[FrozenGamer]

thanks codefaux.  a parity check takes a hell of a long time right now 3 to 5 days.

[ChatNoir]

1 hour ago, FrozenGamer said:

thanks codefaux.  a parity check takes a hell of a long time right now 3 to 5 days.

Does not seem right, unless you are making very high I/O on the Array during parity check.

It should be roughly depending of Parity drive size and it only takes me 1 day, 13 hours, 32 minutes for a 18TB.

 

If you are running parity now, your diagnostics could give more explanation why it is so long.

[FrozenGamer]

ChatNoir, I shut down all the dockers and restarted them and it went back up in speed.  However i did do a diagnostics before i did that.  Where would i look?

[ChatNoir]

@FrozenGamer, as you want, maybe a docker was accessing tons of stuff it was thinking was new, a backup was running or something and you are good now. Maybe there was something else and it might come back later.

What's your usual Parity check duration ?